Financial Planning and Control
On which do you focus more of your time and energy - The things you can control? Or the things you wish you could control, but can't?
This is an especially important question to ponder right now as much of what is going on in the stock markets and world economies are part of that second (much larger) group ... and yet millions of your fellow citizens are expending tremendous amounts of energy trying to manipulate events over which they have very little if any control.
It doesn't have to be that way.
No Controls
Here is a short (and certainly incomplete) list of the things over which none of us has control: the weather, earthquakes, hurricanes, tax rates, stock market prices or the choices of anyone else (even your own kids).
This boils down to two major categories of actions over which you have no control: (a) acts of God or nature or (b) the choices and actions of others.
While it would be nice if we could control these things, we simply don't have that capacity. We can pass laws that single out some of these issues, but a quick look at history tells us we will never eliminate them (as exemplified by society's long term battle with alchohol and drugs).
Complete Control
You DO have complete control over a few important items - most notably your own choices (at least in a free society where common law protects your freedom of choice).
I also believe that we all have far more control over our perceptions and emotions than most of us would like to admit. Is today a good day? or a bad one? Clearly how you process the events of your day has a lot to do with your answer to that question. Example: were your feelings hurt today because of something someone else said? You have no control over what someone else says. You have complete control over how you feel about it. Like Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Nobody can hurt your feelings without your permission."
Just as "one man's junk is another man's treasure," your "crappy day where everything went wrong" could be a reason for jubilation for someone with a different perspective.
Planning - Managing What You Can't Control
There is a difference between accepting that you can't be in control over everything and believing you are doomed to some lesser result in your life because of it. The bridge to your potential and getting "more" of whatever is important to you is your financial plan.
This plan will lay out some kind of direction you would like to go (goals, objectives - those things in life that are most important to you) and will help you make better choices for yourself along the way (those things in life over which you DO have control).
The other area where a financial plan can really help is to have protections built in for when something undesirable over which you have no control happens. Was your portfolio properly designed to deflect the worst of the sting when the stock market took a dump? Hey, 100 years of market history shows that the market corrects rather severely every few years. That's why we call it the Stock Market Roller Coaster. There are alternatives to owning stocks. Did you have any of those in place? A well designed financial plan would.
When that earthquake, hurricane or flood happens; are you properly protected against the loss? If you were the one in the car that was hit by a drunk driver, would you rather your family gets nothing? or at least has enough money so they could survive without your income?
The Ultimate Choice
At each moment in life you have choices that you can make. In most cases, you have 100% complete control over those decisions - if you choose to accept that responsibility (I think that's "the Ultimate Choice" you will make).
From my perspective as a Wealth Coach who has been at this for a while (and seen well more than a hundred cases) you can either (a) take control over your perceptions, emotions and the resulting decisions you make in any situation. Doing so will drive your life to it's greatest potential. Or (b) you can let life hit you in the face and grouse and compain to anyone who will listen about how miserable you are because of all the bad stuff that happened to you.
I know which camp I want to be in ... and I'll be very happy to help you in that direction, too. All you need to do is ask.